#1-the arrival

Hoy salimos.  I am going to miss the Las Cruces biological Station very much, and all the students and faculty.  Good-bye everybody!  Crocodiles and macaws oh my!  Such a beautiful country and incredible experience for all.  Thank you Jessica and Scott and Steve!

Today was poster day!  The students did a great job on the poster and I'm looking forward to them presenting.  They came through in a big way, and I was really excited for them to show their great work.

Working on the poster today and continuing some data analysis.  Kate and Shaniah are reading the literature for last minute connections to make with our data.  Excited for tomorrow!

Un dia de analisis de data.  We stayed most of the day in the lab working on data today.  Getting some interesting results.  We saw some awesome tucans today. 

Yay I got back on my blog! - Tuesday!

Good day to dial it down slightly.  Our free day!  We went for a walk with Armando, and he showed us some wonderful plants and how he uses them.  These spiny palms are used for fibers to make the hat he was wearing (pic).  Victoria shared with us how the Ngobe people process a large bromeliad for fibers for making cord and thread.  I was excited to try translating for the group for her, and it went pretty well.  Scott is an awesome translator, so he helped out when I got stuck on a concept.  It was fun to see the students try out scraping the leaf with a wooden bamboo tool.  Victoria is so talented.   After this, I rested some, and then Kassandra, Michael, Secily and I took a taxi into San Vito to shop and meet everyone at dinner.  Good pasta and company:)   Thank you so much Jessica and Scott for organizing this week, and orchestrating all the taxis and pizza.  I know it's not easy to get us all to where we need t...

Today, moving a bit slower... Still feeling extremely fortunate to be at this beautiful place, but not getting as much sleep as I'd like for all the hiking and activity we are doing each day.  We worked through a few samples today, and identified some interesting invertebrates.  There was a rat-tailed maggot in our sample!!  Love that name.  Plenty of beetle larvae and mosquitoes, too.  We had looked at one of the camera traps earlier, and saw an agouti.  When we collected the other camera traps, nothing but people were on there - bummer.  We left two cameras out until Monday so hopefully we will find something on them.  Saturday night, the cultural exchange was really beautiful.  I loved Jayden's song.  It took me somewhere else.  The rest of the exchanges were really wonderful, and I really appreciate each of you sharing from the heart.  I would like to share a song from my family, but feel a bit too shy right now.  ...

Went hiking to the waterfall today past the orange tape - :)  Doing an external survey of life on the bromeliads with our research group, and seeing some wonderful things.  Kate, Shaniah, Jonathon and Kassandra were on the hike where we saw a lovely little glass frog (you can see its internal organs through its transparent green skin!) and the most beautiful bush-like fall of dozens of orchid blossoms that met us at one point on the path.  My pics were fuzzy, so Kassandra sent me her's.  THANKS SO MUCH!  The waterfall was jut lovely, and I got into it after the sweaty hike - so clear and cold and clean.  The pic of the group by Kassandra is great.  We sampled a bromeliad on the ground, and this was the last internal invert sample for the project!  Now it's time to get on the poster and see how the camera traps come out.

I went to the dentist today in San Vito!  My crown on my tooth popped off last night as I was flossing. It has never happened before, so it's crazy that it happened in Costa Rica! However the dentist in San Vito was very friendly and helped me very quickly, and I was able to get back to the field station in time to find some enormous spiders in a bromeliad, observe their behavior, and attempt to identify them with my students!  We think these are male and female. PS -more blogs have been written before this, however this is the first day I have internet in my cabin to post.  My earlier  = blogs will be retro- posted in the next day:)

Attachments area Today was an amazing day with Shaniah and Kate. Excited to look at what is living in the bromeliads. We walked the jungle Trail to mark bromeliads to sample, and about halfway through, Shaniah saw animals running from a stream ravine. We saw two coati-mundis, a jaguarundi, I believe we heard a peccary, and I saw what I think was a puma walk slowly and then leap up the hill at the very end of this entire incredible mammal event.  we immediately turned around and headed back to the main part of the biological station instead of being close to this large cat! It was one of the most remarkable wildlife sightings I've had in my visits to Costa Rica.  We ate lunch in the field at the overlook point and saw over 100 vultures circling in the sky in the distance in a tall tornado formation. I've never seen such a large vulture assemblage before.  Halfway through lunch, a large palm tree shed a very large palm frond that hit us over...

Tuesday Early day and long day! Missing my daughter and hoping she is ok without mama’s bedtime wishes.     We ate breakfast at 6:30 then headed out on a tour of the botanical gardens with Rodo followed by a hike in the premontane rainforest on the Java river trail with Scott.    Good hike with a lot of fun climbing and large root challenges.   We met with our students and did some intensive planning for research during the afternoon and evening.   Kate, Shaniah and I did a reconnaissance trip through the forest to find bromeliads to sample for invertebrates and to plan places to install camera traps to track vertebrate use of this aquatic/semi-aquatic micro-ecosystem up in the trees.   This is one of many types of epiphytic microhabitat that provide additional complexity, in turn generating greater diversity, in tropical forest systems.   We marked at least 7 bromeliad locations with orange biodegradable tape for later return.    We...

Monday We met at 6AM to have breakfast and take off on the bus over the mountains to Las Cruces.   The trip is supposed to take until 4PM.   We   had a really good thickened pineapple juice with breakfast and a typical Costa Rican (Tico) breakfast of rice and beans, sour cream, eggs, and Maduro (sweet fried plantain).   I met some of the other students this morning like Austin, Secily and Jonathan.    The trip was gorgeous as we rolled up into the cloud forest and I discussed the different ecosystem zones we were transitioning through with the students near me on the bus.   We visited a very unique ecosystem   (very rare) called the paramo, which is a high altitude alpine tropical “tundra-like” environment.   Essentially thinner soils with waxy-leaved plants and cooler-weather species like blueberry.   We also found and ate blackberries with the help of Margaret.   The dry environment with few trees or stunted trees and shrubs w...

Sunday Leaving at 4AM from the house in Lawrence , KS!   Excited to see Costa Rica, the students I will be working with, the faculty from other universities and the Las Cruces Biological Station.    Arrived at 1:30PM Costa Rica time, which is also KANSAS time so I’m on the same schedule as my family.   We got to the hotel aeropuerto (Airport hotel) in San Jose, and saw the lovely garden they maintain plus had the Allote (a regional squash) soup that they use a lot in Costa Rica at the hotel restaurant. It was muy deliciosa.   The garden had a lime tree with beautiful limes falling off of it in addition to a parrot in a cage.   I met Scott and Jessica who were trying to get everyone from the airport to the hotel, but some folks had missed their flights.   We had dinner together and I met many of the great students we will be working with like Kristy, Kate, Kaitlin, Lynnshell, as well as professors including Mone, Randall, Steven, Michael, margaret a...